


it's better to forget (than to remember you forgot)

by saveourtiredhearts



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dubious Consent, M/M, POV Second Person, all sex is implied and not consensual, commandos only mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-23 21:42:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7481112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saveourtiredhearts/pseuds/saveourtiredhearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you can't remember something happened, then does it matter that it did?</p>
<p>Bucky can't remember that he was tortured, only knows that he was. </p>
<p>(Don't be fooled. This story centers around Steve.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's better to forget (than to remember you forgot)

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a happy fic. There is dubious consent, and things implied, and it's not linear. It may be confusing. I'm sorry.
> 
> Thanks, as always, to my wonderful beta, [wttlpwrites,](http://archiveofourown.org/users/wttlpwrites) who helped me out even though I basically just threw this story at them, really late at night.
> 
> P.S. I should be working on my Big Bang fic, but instead I did this. Oops?

Here is the thing.

You remember the Hydra examination room in more vivid detail than you remember anything else. More vividly than your first look at a world with color vision, more vividly than your first beating in an alley, more vividly than--

Here’s the thing.

Bucky doesn’t remember it at all.

 

In the barracks he touches you, grabs your knee and holds it steady and you don’t know what to do. He looks drunk, but you’ve been by his side since you pulled him off that lab table, except when the officers were questioning him--

You don’t know what he told them. You suspect not much.

He grabs your knee and you’re in the barracks and you let him do it. He doesn’t look you in the eyes, just stares steadily at your chin as his fingers creep up your thigh--

In the end, you get hard. You get off. Bucky gets hard. Bucky leaves.

 

Bucky doesn’t remember the examination room, and he’s surprised when Dugan tells him he was gone for a week.

You’re near a river, all of you, some river somewhere somehow and it’s too cold to swim and you’re thinking of the beach at Coney Island, you’re thinking of two dimes and a soda and bare feet in sand, you’re thinking of--

“A week,” says Bucky, and he sounds bemused. You’re not supposed to be hearing this, you’re supposed to be planning the takedown of the next Hydra base, but all of a sudden you needed a cigarette and had gone to Bucky to get one. He smoked all the time, back in Brooklyn, had gotten addicted to it and struggled to keep the smoke away from your faulty lungs.  As you walk over, you realize you haven’t seen him smoke since--

“Shorter than I thought,” says Bucky, and he cleans his rifle.

 

You know he doesn’t remember because you ask him and he tells you--it’s funny because he never would’ve told you back in Brooklyn. Bucky Barnes never did have a straight answer for anything. A laugh, a cigarette, a girl--that’s what he had. He didn’t ask many questions either. It wasn’t his style. It wasn’t even like he didn’t know the answers. He just ignored them, plowed right on ahead with a charming grin and a twinkle in his eye.

_How much of that was faked?_ You want to ask, but you don’t.

You’re not in the barracks this time, you’re in the woods and you’re switching lookout duties and he gets down on his knees, lays his rifle carefully before him. You stare down at dark brown hair and you don’t ask why, but you ask--

He reaches for your belt buckle, and you get hard, and he gets hard, and he’s still the only one who walks away.

 

Bucky walks away from fights. You throw yourself into them, full body, full spirit, and you stumble away when all is said and done. Bucky walks away and you don’t know how he does it. He says it’s ‘cause he ain’t got nothing to prove, _not like your skinny ass, Rogers_. You don’t tell him you fight not because you’re small, but because you don’t know anything else, you don’t have anything else--

You have Bucky.

But do you?

 

The Howling Commandos are not yours. They’re Captain America’s and they’re accepting and they all have their weird quirks. Dugan chews on his dog tags, Morita refuses to clean his gun in the mornings, Falsworth lies about unimportant things for no reason, Jones writes left-handed, even though his right is dominant.

They remember their time in the Hydra barracks, and react accordingly. Bucky remembers what he remembers, which is--

Not much.

 

If you can’t remember something, how can it be a part of who you are?

In other words--if Bucky can’t remember the time he was tortured, how much does it matter that he was?

 

“Let me touch you,” you ask and Bucky says _no_.

“What do you remember?” you ask and Bucky says _nothing_.

“Why--” you ask and Bucky runs, walks, strides away, out of the room, across the clearing, into the night.

Bucky doesn’t ask questions because he knows he won’t like the answers, and you can’t get a straight answer out of him because--

Bucky runs away.

 

You want a chronological explanation but there are pieces you can’t remember.

Once you were in an alleyway--

(That’s how a lot of your stories start. As a matter of fact, that’s how a lot of Bucky’s stories start, too. _Once, Steve was in an alleyway--_ )

Once you were in an alleyway and two guys were beating you up, and you got knocked down and you didn’t get up and Bucky came by and he thought you were dead. You weren’t. You were just unconscious. And you missed the part where he brought you home, where he cleaned you up. You missed the moment he laid you in bed and got you down to your boxers and undershirt, and you missed whatever else he might’ve done, and you can't get that time back.

You slept too, and at the time you thought it necessary, and you went to work, and you hid away and at the time you thought it was necessary, but now you know you missed things. You missed something, you missed Bucky, because--

Because if you don’t remember something, how can it change you? If you don’t remember it at all?

You don’t remember your father because you never met him. Does it count?

Does it matter?

 

“Do you like it?” you ask one night, before Bucky touches you. You know he’s thinking about it--in the dead of night, the two of you removed from the Commandos and the fire.

You don’t expect an answer and you’re not disappointed. Bucky goes on cleaning his rifle. You stare out at the sky, and forget the constellations, one by one.

 

The thing is--

The thing is you want Bucky, you always have. You wanted him in an innocent way, and then in a much less innocent way and if he knew, he never let on.

You wanted his red lips, and his black hair and his smooth skin. You wanted his laugh and his hands and that goddamn twinkle in his eye, you wanted that smirk he plastered across his face every chance he got and you wanted--

What did Bucky want?

You never asked. Instead you looked towards, and you looked away and you sketched. You drew all the things you wanted and you would’ve burned them except matches were precious and you wouldn’t waste them on that.

Once, you were--

It’s not in alleyway this time, because you wouldn’t tell this story to anyone.

Once, you were at work, and you came back to the apartment you and Bucky shared, and your sketches were spread out on the kitchen table and Bucky was gone. You didn’t burn them then, either, just stared at the overwhelming evidence laid out before you, and went to bed in sheets that smelled like Bucky without bothering to clean the mess up.

In the morning, the paper was all back where it belonged, tucked in a notebook that was shoved into one of the cabinets near the stove.

The other question--if you never mention something, does that mean it ever happened? Is it as good as forgetting?

 

Here is as chronological as it gets:

You meet Bucky and you want Bucky and Bucky doesn’t want you.

You want to go to war, and Bucky doesn’t want to go to war, and Bucky goes to war.

Bucky’s saved you over and over and you save Bucky and on the walk back to camp you look over at the man beside you and think--

_Who are you?_

 

Here is a story you’ll never tell anyone, even though it starts in an alleyway.

Once you were in an alleyway and you sucked a guy’s cock because you were curious. He told you to keep your teeth out of the way and use your tongue and you did. It was messy at the end, and you got a whole quarter out of it, even though you didn’t ask.

Once you were in an alleyway and Bucky was drunk, and you hauled the two of you home, you red with blood, Bucky red with the flush of alcohol. You got Bucky on the couch and he grabbed your hand, and rested it on his hip. His head lolled back, showed off that long pale neck you so badly wanted to bite, and you were on your knees, and you were taking off his shoes, and your hands moved to his belt and--

The thing is, he didn’t stop you.

The thing is, you liked it.

The thing is, he didn’t remember it the next morning. He laughed and asked how much trouble you had gotten into, and how drunk he had gotten, and you learned he wasn’t the only one who knew how to avoid straight answers.

If you can’t remember something, how can it be a part of who you are? If you can’t remember--how much does it matter that it happened?

 

It isn’t fair that Bucky was tortured and here you are, making it all about you again. It’s not about you, it never has been, and it’s unfortunate that your own feelings are all you have to go on because Bucky won’t tell you a goddamn thing.

You ask.

He doesn’t remember.

 

He gets you off in the woods, in barracks, behind a house in town, anytime the two of you are alone.

You let him, because you let him the first time and you don’t know how to stop it. It’s the only time he never smiles, and that’s how you know it’s him, because he _smirks_ all the time now, out there with the Commandos.

You wanted that smirk once, wanted it for yourself. Now you want to wipe it off his goddamn face.

 

If Bucky doesn’t remember the Hydra torture, only knows that it happened because he knows he went in, and went out, how much could it have changed about him?

How much of the man who fought beside you was your childhood friend? Much more than you thought?

Or absolutely none at all?

 

Here is the thing.

It was never about you. It was never about Captain America either, and you wonder, as you watch Bucky fall off a train--

If you can manage, ever, to forget this--

Does it matter that it happened?

Does it matter that Bucky lied?

**Author's Note:**

> As always, my [tumblr.](http://yourblueeyedboys.tumblr.com/)  
>  
> 
> Numb the pain with novocaine and tie a hangman's knot.  
> It's better to forget than to remember you forgot.  
> On your face a broken space, the features all but lost;  
> close the car door, windows too, and turn on the exhaust.  
> Take the pill and try to still your body's aches and groans.  
> Screaming makes in obvious, reduce it all to moans.  
> Fit your lips to hardened slits, shut your voice within.  
> It's easy to get lost when there's such an awful din.


End file.
